


The Raven Herself is Hoarse

by corvidless



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: I love me some angst, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 00:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13423176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvidless/pseuds/corvidless
Summary: Things are different now, they've been different for a while. With people cut off from the other planes, the world has been left to fend for itself. With many people separated from their Gods, and many more Gods hiding on the Prime Material Plane, Faerûn has fallen into a state of immense disrepair. Factions have formed and are now waging war against each other while other groups lurk in the shadows in an attempt to regain the statuses that were once theirs.





	The Raven Herself is Hoarse

The crashing of a body smashing against a wall was not an uncommon one. It has the tendency to sound like chunks of meat suddenly being barraged with rather old plates of metal. It becomes much louder when those chunks of meat move to collide with those plates of metal at about the speed of a very agitated, disoriented, and downright paranoid drow. 

 

Dust shot up from the ground in sickly clouds upon impact, stirred out of place by a figure slamming into the wall and crumpling to the ground with a painful thud. A pale light filtered through the alleyway, illuminating the particles like miniature stars as they danced in front of the drow’s eyes, blurry and wavering as waves of pain pulsed from the back of his skull. 

 

There is silence, for a moment. Save for the drow’s own laboured breathing and the creaking of metal sheets, the alley is quiet. 

 

The drow moved to sit up, pressing his back against the makeshift metal wall and cringing as the corrugated iron groaned under his weight. Perhaps if just he sat here, hidden in between the discarded wood and the other assorted garbage, he would be just concealed enough to live through the night. He prayed for fate to be kind.

 

But, of course, fate is a cruel mistress. 

 

From out of the darkness stepped a figure. Lit from behind, it was motionless except for it’s billowing cloak which danced unnaturally in an alleyway with no breeze. It took a step forward, and the drow inhaled sharply; the figure seemed to almost materialise out of the shadows themselves, stepping forth into the dusk light. 

 

In one hand, the assailant held what seemed to be a book, yet the cover was all but torn off and the pages were looking decidedly worse for wear. 

 

In the other hand was a scythe. 

 

The drow pushed himself up and attempted to scrabble backwards, before the painful stabbing of rough metal against his spine reminded him that he had backed himself into a corner, surrounded on all sides by rotting wood and rusting metal. 

 

The drow’s breath grew hot and heavy as the figure took another step forwards, effectively pinning him into a tomb of his own design. It tilted it’s head towards the book for a moment, scanning the ripped and tattered pages before nodding and stowing it away in it’s robe. 

 

And then it spoke.

 

“Sorry my man, but you’re going to have to come with me.” The drow’s eyes widened as the figure drew his scythe into a defensive pose. “I’m taking you in on multiple counts of theft, robbery, and larceny. It’d probably be best for you to just come along with me, now.” 

 

The drow paused for a second: although he was certainly not about to point it out to the scythe-wielding being, he was quite sure that theft, robbery, and larceny were pretty much the same thing.

 

As he weighed up his options, the cloaked figure began to tap his foot. “Come on, man. We don’t have all day. Are you going to make this easy for me?” 

 

The drow eyed up the scythe, compared it to his current position, and decided that it would probably be the far more healthier option to comply with the other’s wishes. Ignoring the stabbing pain in his side, he pushed himself off of the ground, clawing for purchase on the wall behind him as he wobbled upright. The figure took a step backwards, allowing him to skitter out of the alcove and into the alley. 

 

He considered making a run for it, down one of the adjoining alleys. Then he considered what might happen if he tried that and failed.

 

And then he didn’t consider much at all as the heel of a scythe rammed into the back of his head with a sickening crunch.

-

 

Kravitz was lucky that the drow was only a slight fellow - anything heavier and the would have had to call for backup - but as it was he could fairly confidently haul the drow over his shoulder and lug him back to camp.

 

He didn’t have to go far to get back to the Roost - no one ever really had to; entrances had this strange, yet convenient, tendency to pop up wherever you needed them, allowing safe passage back to camp. These passages weren’t hard to find if you knew where to look.

 

The problem was that very few people knew where to look. 

 

The alleyways around this area of the city were all but a ruin: once rustic stone passageways had crumbled away into dust and were now haphazardly repaired with sheets of corrugated metal and decomposing planks of wood. Every time one would fall away, another piece of trash would be thrown up in its place to try and reinstate whatever security the walls once had. Kravitz was lucky to find one of the passages to the Roost in an area such as this. Amongst the various scrap metals nailed to the wall was a dull sheet of steel roughly two metres tall, barely distinguishable from the other tin and iron stapled up alongside it. The steel was covered in a deep red rust, swinging from side to side unnaturally, creaking painfully like stiff joints. One of the corners had been freshly etched into, revealing the silver sheen of the steel below in the shape of a corvid skull. A raven’s skull, more precisely. 

 

Kravitz grunted as he shifted the weight of his drow companion on his back and pushed the weathered steel to the right, cringing at the tortured groans the metal made as it slid out of place, allowing him to enter. 

 

With a quick glance behind him, Kravitz ducked and swung himself under the metal grating, careful not to scratch the unconscious drow on the jagged metal. 

 

The atrium he stepped was draped in shadows, rays of pale light still filtering through the cracks in the old marble walls and ceiling. Great white pillars lined the room - far more grey and green now from years of disrepair, moss creeping up their crumbling forms like a disease. The far right wall had been plastered in scraps of wood and corrugated steel, barbed wire and bars running along the edges as an extra precaution. 

 

His boots clacked loudly on the marble floors, polished by the steps of a thousand generations long since departed from this plane. Figures huddled by the pillars drew their heads to watch him pass for a moment before returning to their fires; others repairing the walls barely acknowledged him at all. It was a pitiful sight - a once great army turned into… this: roughly thirty survivors forced to hide in an abandoned temple for a God that no longer existed. What had they become?

 

The sudden caw of a raven snapped Kravitz out of his melancholy; a harsh and grating noise, but there was something familiar and comforting about the skinny black bird that perched on something concealed in gloom at the back of the temple. Its beady eyes regarded him carefully before it took off to huddle in the rafters to watch from above. 

 

He shifted the weight of the drow and continued his way to the back of the room. As he approached, the shadows seemed to peel away, as if nothing but cobwebs clinging to old furniture in an attic, disintegrating the moment he stepped closer. 

 

Soon the raven’s perch became visible: a large chair standing on a wide plinth against the back wall, cobbled together out of old slabs of greying and cracked marble. It was backed by slats of wood and held together with a mess of nails and barbed wire which curled around the headrest of the chair. It was sinister. It was empty. And it was a throne. 

 

Kravitz reached the foot of the plinth and immediately set the drow down and knelt on the dusty floor. He let his braids hang over his lowered face until a familiar presence washed over him. There was a brief chill in the air, an unearthly draft washing over his back. 

 

When he looked up again, there she was. Wreathed in a cape of iridescent feathers, crown atop her head, was the Raven Queen. 

 

Her form was that of a human, this time. Her imposing figure leaned back against the battered marble, gracefully as ever, as if someone effortlessly had draped a sheath of silk over the throne. Her dark skin was warm against the cold tones of the greying stone and rotting wood, almost glowing as small spots of light danced over her face from the waning light. The dying light picked out the blemishes and scratches that littered her face; a mixture of deep gashes and small blemishes from the world outside of the Roost. Small grooves revealing a history of war that had long since past, it’s memories only left to her. 

“Kravitz.” Her address was warm, yet authoritative. The Raven Queen shifted slightly in her chair, laying her hand on the throne’s crooked armrest and begin to tap her fingers. “Let’s see who you’ve brought me.” 

 

The drow had begun to stir after his ordeal, waking up on the cold cracked floor of the temple. His hands immediately reached for the back of his head where he had been struck, groaning in pain, lips drawn back into a grimace. He shook the hair out of his eyes and stared upwards at the orchestrator of this situation, perhaps preparing himself to worm his way out of another difficult situation.

 

Then his eyes went wide as they locked with the Raven Queen’s.

 

The rhythmic tapping of her fingers began to sound like drums of impending doom; impatience and anticipation melding into an insidious rapping. 

 

“My, my, there was a high price on your head.” 

 

The change in her tone was stark from when she had addressed him, and Kravitz found himself glancing away from his Queen’s now-icy gaze. Instead his eyes wandered onto the drow, his last bounty of the day, who had begun to quake in fear as people were so want to do when they realised whose company they were in. 

 

Kravitz hated to think it, but his Queen had changed significantly in the last few months. There was something far more insidious surrounding her now; in the way she moved, in the way she spoke - it was like an infection. A bone chilling infection that spread from heart to heart and turned them to ice instantly. 

 

The fear the Raven Queen instilled in people had always been something to behold, but in these more recent weeks she had turned from imposing to terrifying… it unnerved him. Desperately wanting to rid his mind of these doubts, Kravitz reminded himself that it was better for him, and everyone else, to simply remain on task, just as they had always done. Well, almost always. 

 

But through lidded eyes all he could do was watch on in mild disdain as the drow began pleading on the floor, hands clasped in front of him in a begging motion, almost as if he was praying. Words tumbled out of his mouth in a torrent, yet they fell on deaf ears. To Kravitz, the pleas were just noise: begging, crying, screaming, and he heard none of it. After years of this line of work, you just got used to it. It was like static. 

 

And to the Raven Queen the cries were like terrible music. A song that she had heard over a thousand times in her long, long lifespan. Like nails on a chalkboard. No matter where the bounty came from or who they were, sobbing and shrieking always somehow seemed to sound like a string quartet that had fallen out of tune and harsh. 

 

Kravitz’s gaze flickered back to the figure of the Raven Queen as she suddenly lifted a hand in a stopping motion. The drow stopped his babbling in an instant. 

 

“You see, someone wants you incredibly badly, Finnigan Glannach,” the words poured out of her mouth as softly as a whisper, yet reverberated around the room as a ghostly echo. A chill ran down Kravitz’s back as the unearthly susurration began again, “The reward for finding you was, well, quite staggering. You’re said to have a knack of slipping out of… undesired situations.” She paused, dark eyes drifting over the pair in front of her. “Fortunately for me - and rather unfortunately for you - this will not be one of these situations.” She was playing with something in her hands, running her chipped fingernails delicately over something silver. 

 

Kravitz knew well what it was - a sickle. Its curved blade was a vicious contrast to the rest of the temple and its possessions; the metal gleamed unnaturally, perfectly polished and newly sharpened, siezed perfectly in the Raven Queen’s grasp. She’d had it for as long as Kravitz could remember, although in the past it had been more of a ceremonial tool and far less bloodstained. 

 

She twirled it effortlessly between her fingers, the blade seeming to narrowly avoid her skin by mere millimeters. “We are going to collect your bounty, and then simply deliver you to our contractor. Sound fair?” The drow scrambled on the ground as he moved to protest but as the Raven Queen pressed a single slender finger to her lips, his movement ceased almost immediately. 

 

“For now,” she motioned a pair of sentries stood nearby towards her with the hook of her sickle, “while we await payment, you will be taken to the Eternal Stockade to-”

 

She stopped. Kravitz’s head snapped upwards suddenly in surprise. And for a moment he saw the flash of panic in her eyes, melancholy dripping over her sharp features. 

 

And then it was gone - with a wipe of her hand over her jaw, her expression was blank again. “You will be taken to one of our holding cells. Our client will collect you then.” But yet there was a bitterness in her voice, the omnipresent whisper from before replaced with a more sinister sibilance, like the hiss of a snake. Kravitz’s gaze never once left the Raven Queen, his brow furrowed as she sharply gestured for the sentries to haul the drow away, who had been left in a stunned silence. 

 

The trio exited the atrium swiftly and his Queen immediately slumped into her chair once again, oblivious to the barbed wire trailing close to her crown. Or perhaps she just didn’t care. Her head rested on her hand while the other still fidgeted with the silver blade, eyes full of a sadness that made Kravitz’s heart pang. 

 

He stood up in front of her, yet she showed no signs of acknowledgement, instead choosing to stare off into the temple, eyes resting on one of the small fires that had been coaxed into existence. It reminded him of a saying that someone he once knew used to hum -  _ the lights are on, but nobody’s home _ . 

 

Kravitz wondered, for the briefest moment, what had caused that slip. To suddenly spout words from the Astral Plane as if everything was still the same. As if the Stockade hadn’t been long since cut off from them. So much time had passed -  _ too  _ much time had passed to suddenly start reminiscing again. To suddenly start  _ remembering. _

 

“Your Majesty,” he started softly, opening his mouth to say more and then… faltering. What was he to say?  _ “Are you alright, ma’am?”  _ Or perhaps: _ “What the fuck was that?” _ swiftly reminding himself that he would never dare to address his Queen like that, not unless he wanted to end up much like poor old Finnigan back there. 

 

He was fortunate enough to have elicited a response from the Raven Queen, as her head swung back in his direction, an unreadable expression painted across her face. “Kravitz. Excellent work today.” A chill was sent up his spine and Kravitz frowned: the words themselves were well meaning and encouraging but her voice was still filled with the hiss and the bite of a serpent. She was looking directly at him, waiting to see if he would dare to challenge her. 

 

Kravitz opened his mouth again to speak but was cut off by a wave of her hand. “You’ll get your cut as soon as the payment is processed, Kravitz. Until then-”

 

“Your Majesty, are you alright?” Concern overflowed from his head and the words tumbled out of his mouth like a waterfall that he was unable to stop. 

 

The Raven Queen swiftly moved into a standing position, staring daggers down at him and grasping a far more tangible blade in her hand. She was evidently caught off guard by the question, or she was preparing to have to defend her sudden slip earlier. Kravitz should have felt fearful in that moment, or maybe embarrassed or downright terrified, but he didn’t. Instead cogs in his head began to turn as his eyes flickered over his Queen, and soon his thoughts were awash with pure sadness. 

 

For when she stood, Kravitz couldn’t help but notice her cape of feathers did not shine like it used to, and her once gorgeous crown was missing gems and was beginning to rust away. When she stood, the sunspots no longer danced on her face, her complexion becoming as cold as the stone that surrounded them. When she stood she was, like this temple - like these people, like  _ him _ \- only a shadow of herself. 

 

The overwhelming melancholy pouring through his skull was suddenly halted by something much gentler. “Kravitz…” The Raven Queen breathed, her voice far softer than it had been before. The venomous hisses had been replaced with a gentle breeze as she slowly stepped off of the plinth and onto the scuffed marble floor. The mere utterance of his name in that tone nearly shot him into a different time - a time where everything was far more simple. A time where they still had everyone.

 

She smiled at him slightly and stowed the sickle away under her cloak, making the slightest motion for him to join her. 

 

Dutifully following, Kravitz’s Queen guided him to one of the smaller back rooms of the temple where devotees and carers would have stayed long ago. As if floating, she drifted over to the back wall and gently nudged a rusted piece of steel that had been nailed up out of the way, revealing a slitted window to the outside world. Dust filtered in through the gap along with the dying light of dusk, illuminating the faint gouges and scarring that decorated the Raven Queen’s face. Kravitz took up a place next to some old crates, leaning back on the old reinforced wall, gazing around the room with feigned interest, far more apprehensive of what she was about to say. 

 

Silence prevailed for a few moments more as the Raven Queen continued to stare out of the window before she muttered something that Kravitz could barely make out: “How long has it been, Kravitz? How long have we been stuck out here?” She trailed a finger along the window ledge and studied the dust and grime that gathered under her nail as she spoke, “How long have we been unable to go back home?”

 

Kravitz coughed, partly from the dust and partly from the underlying sense of uneasiness in the room. His concern had automatically tripled - it was not often these days that the Raven Queen talked to him so privately and openly. Maybe once it had been a comfort, but now it just felt foreign. “Your Majesty, if I may, we could always try to return home again… it’s been a long time since the last attempt.”

 

Her only response was a scoff. 

 

Kravitz paused, looking away before he spoke again; he had to choose his next few words very carefully. “We could always try to reconnect with the Bureau, I’m sure they would-” 

 

“Don’t, Kravitz.” The Raven Queen exhaled, and in the stale light he could see her form wavering slightly, like a shaky and unbalanced silhouette. “Just, don’t.” 

 

He was more than relieved that her tone was still quiet, but he was more than aware that he was treading on extremely thin ice. Playing these sorts of dangerous games was no laughing matter. He shuffled uncomfortably, weighing up if his next few statements were really worth the wrath he might incur for speaking his mind. 

 

That breezy susurration broke his thoughts yet again: “We… we are the ones who keep this world fair. We are the ones that keep a watchful eye on the world for hubris, and we dispose of it wherever it begins to fester.” Her hand gripped the window ledge and splinters fell to the ground with small taps. “ _ We _ are the ones who keep the balance. Not them.” 

 

Kravitz was taken aback. Her voice was even and calm, as if trying to convince him of her point of view, but there was something more sinister in her speech, a lower tone that sounded almost like teeth grating against each other. He knew he shouldn’t push more, but that answer - it wasn’t enough. Wrath be damned, he was going to speak his mind. “And what about the hunting? The bounties?” 

 

She barely cast a glance his way, instead tightening her grip on the wooden surface. “We’re maintaining our power. We are the reminder that these people can never outrun death.” Each word was slow and deliberate, as if she were not only trying to convince Kravitz, but herself as well. Power… They had never had to wield power in this way before... These speeches seemed to Kravitz almost like soliloquies; internal monologues to from the Raven Queen to herself, trying to convince herself with insane propaganda that she was right, because even a part of the her own conscience doubted her plans. Because part of her felt  _ guilty.  _

 

Perhaps this was a breakthrough, the first one in months. He was so close to figuring out what went wrong, and with answers he could try to pull his Queen back from the precipice that she was teetering on the edge of. “Your Majesty, forgive me for speaking out of turn,” he caught her eye and still forced himself to continue, “I miss the Astral Plane every day. I miss the way things  _ used  _ to be. I miss the old days, before all this. I miss everything. I miss every _ one. _ ” Kravitz attempted to compose himself as he spoke, trying not to trip over his tongue and express the plague of nostalgia that had been tumbling around in his head. 

 

A dull clang snatched his eyes back to the Raven Queen, only to see that her hands had latched onto an old pipe fixed onto the wall. Her hands were partially hidden by shadow, but Kravitz could make out that her fingers were no longer tipped in nails, but dark claws surrounded by dull scales. The metal creaked under her crushing grasp, rivets falling out of the wall with sharp  _ clunk _ s. 

 

The light was still fading yet Kravitz could make out hints of feathers beginning to stand up on end on the back of the Raven Queen’s neck, raising up from out of her skin and ruffling slightly in the breeze. Still focused on the crumpled pipe she breathed heavily, “You’d do well not to speak out of turn too often, Kravitz.” 

 

Without missing a beat, the Raven Queen swung the window shut and turned to leave, brushing past him brusquely. The faint stench of death followed loyally behind her, sweet but rotten enough to make a mortal gag. Kravitz drew a hand over his face quickly as her silhouette stopped in the doorway. 

 

She uttered a hollow sigh; “I miss them too.” 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay wow I'm really tired and this almost killed me.  
> If there are any mistakes in tense and stuff I apologise I was very sleepy when I proofread this so!! 
> 
> Also its been like 2 years since I posted Totem Poles whoops sorry for abandoning that one.


End file.
